Carola Dibbell - The Only Ones

That is the good part about sleepaway, I could work all the time. I sometimes work nights. I paid off what I owe and am starting to save. Maybe I could go up to the Farm. It’s a long time since I even heard a message back from Rauden.

On Monday morning, a cuchivan picks the Armory girls up near their Zone. It brings them back Friday night.

When she climbs off this cuchi by Alley Park, I’m waiting with the trike, very good, how was school, but to tell the truth I could see by how she looks it’s not going to work. She doesn’t say anything. She just goes in her room. She doesn’t walk any direction at all. Fifteen years and change.

Still alive.

But not so you would know.

At Armory, we don’t have to worry who sits with her. They sit where they are told, and if they don’t, they make them stand up all the time, and if they don’t, they are expelled.

She hates that school.

They all hate that school, all the girls. They get scared. One girl is so scared, she bit everybody. They all have to have tests, did they get something from her. This latest Wave of lesser flus has everyone Alert.

I tell Ani, “Don’t worry, you won’t get anything.” But I never like to go too far with that, or who knows where it will end up?

“Hello? I got bit!” Then she holds up her hand, bit. It even has the pink mark on it. It is the same hand where the flea thing happened. So Ani goes, “Again!” Then she goes in her room and pretty much stays there until I bring her to Alley Park Monday morning and say, “I’m going to do extra work. I’m going to bring in enough to pay Partial and put you in a better school — better than Migan’s school.”

She just gives me a look, like that is really going to happen. Then she gets on the Armory van and off she goes.

I still can’t get through to Rauden. I am really suspicious he put a jam up on his system.

Summer is over. She came home with a Note saying she must be more careful with her swipe. She was caught trying to destroy it with some scissors in Art.

Here we go again. What is it with the swipe?

At first she wouldn’t say but finally it comes out. After the biting thing, the tests came back and when they checked hers against spit code it came up she was twelve years old and lives what are the chancesisisBE g in Bucharest.

I just tell her it is an anomaly.

But as soon as she went off on the Monday van, I rushed to the City Line hole early for my job and sneak into the public Board they have there that reads pure code. I run my own pure code to see what happens. It says I’m twelve years old and live in Bucharest.

I wipe the reading out with my regular swipe ID, take a walk, and try again.

It says I’m twelve years old and live in Grozny.

I wipe that out with my regular swipe, take a walk, and try again. This time it doesn’t say anything. It’s just access denied.

The cheap Reader I already got from working overtime? I try to reach Rauden on it, while I am up scrubbing Mrs. Arular’s Dome. That doesn’t work. To kill time I am fiddling with Search and put in Bucharest.

I just fix it with Mrs. Arular to get the rest of the day off so I could go to the Farm right away.

I head for the Bronx, get lucky with a sailbus, MagLev/ bridge/local hybro/farmer vehicle all the way to the Farm. I’m not even giving Rauden the heads up. I’m suspicious if I let him know I’m coming, he is going to slip away — and that’s if I even managed to get through.

“I!” Rauden says, when I finally get up the dirt road where leaves is falling from the trees and he finally opens the door. He looks a little different but it’s so long since I saw him, I honestly don’t know what was different, Rauden or me. His hair is totally gray. His face is white, white, white. “This is a surprise.”

I just ignore how he looks and go, “As far as I could tell, to reach you these days, R? Surprise is the only way I even had. Come on.” I just headed back to the Box Room without even saying hi. “How’s your pure code software working these days?”

He is slow on the uptake but shows me where the slides are for the scanner, and it didn’t work at first but after an hour or so I got Bucharest. “Want to see a map?” I said.

So he’s just sitting there. Man! He is tired.

“R, wake up. It worked.”

Then he’s putting his head in his hands like he used to.

“R! It’s the Santa Sofya lot, has to be.” I pull up my Reader beside him and show him the map on the screen. “Look how close it is. Maybe they have tanks there too or better virgins or Compatibility, all I know is, we got a track record. R! I know we could be in trouble but we could make a killing here. It goddamn worked!”

He is just looking around while I am pitching. Look how many new Waves of Epi there is overseas. There are serious Epis in some of those overseas Stans and even in other places, Uruguay, Uganda, whatever, and, man, with the Santa Sofya lot track record, we could really move viables!

Finally he gets himself together. “Let’s talk, I.”

Come on! What is there to discuss?

“Sit down, I.” And he brings me to the kitchen, where there are some chairs near the window.

I’m going, “R, please. Let’s move some viables.”

Maybe it’s because he is right at the window, with light right on him, I notice he really is looking different. Like, his gray hair is so thin. His skin is thin too. You could almost see through it when he finally sits on a chair and faces me.

I go, “What?”

He just holds his hands up. They are swollen.

“What?”

They are shaking bad. His neck shakes too. His whole self is shaking. I never saw him shake like this before. Finally he says, “I can’t do it any more.” He just keeps his hands in the air, shaking. “I just can’t do the work.”

I’m staring at the hands, and then it hits me. Boom.

So that’s what Henry meant Rauden should tell me.

He just starts to cry.

“Since when?”

He’s just crying. Oh, come on, R.

“Since when, R? ”

What is this? He’s like he’s thirteen years old. Everyone I know is crying.

“The birthday was the last time that it worked.”

I’m just sitting there.

“I can hardly even take a tissue sample, let alone somatic fucking nuclear Transfer.”

“The tenth birthday? R! That’s more than five years!”

“I’m sorry, I.”

So then I’m like, “I can’t believe you never told me. You let me make my plans around the sales.” “I’m so sorry, I.”

So. I’m like, I’m almost going to have another Episode, breathe deep. Whoa. “So what about Henry? Henry could do it.”

He shook his head. “Henry doesn’t have the hands for it. He never did. You saw how Dookie turned out.”

“So Lucas could.”

He shook his head.

“Mariah Delize.” I don’t even know why I said it.

Neither did he. “I’m really sorry, I. It’s over.”

So we’re both just sitting there in the kitchen, on chairs.

“I can’t believe you never told me.”

So what is going to happen with Armory Prep? She hates it. She is going to be expelled again. She’s going to end up selling hardy product on the Mound — teeth, nails, piss. The next thing I knew, I hit the roof.

“You fucking show me how to do it.”

He puts his head in his hands.

“She hates her school! She needs the Education! Maybe I could find her a school where she is safe but happy too — a really good school — but I need more bucks! We have a track record! We could do this! You fucking show me now!”

Afted to be a role

THE WAY I DO THE WORK — WELL, FIRST OF ALL, I got to fix my schedule of Nassau County jobs. It’s better if I could work at the Farm say three days straight on a weekday while Ani is at school and time that around a Harvest — then I don’t need two separate trips, but it is a problem because you time Harvest from your period, and mine is not that regular these days, and neither are the roads — with the latest flu Alerts, some road is always caution-taped off. You never know how long a trip is going to take. Some say this latest one will be as bad as Luzon Second.